Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil

Abstract

The present paper explores the relationship between agrarian structure and human capital formation between and within Brazil's federal units. It is argued that whether states' agriculture is in plantation style, based on cheap coerced labor, or organized around family farming matters for the formulation of educational policies. According to the main claim, landlords were not interested in paying higher taxes to educate the masses and curtailed the expansion of schooling in order to keep a cheap workforce and maintain their monopoly over the decision-making process. Describing several episodes in Brazil's history of public instruction, the paper stresses the distributional conflicts over education as well as the rural aristocracy's resistance towards broadly-targeted, citizenship-enhancing educational policies. The descriptive evidence is complemented by statistical analyses employing historical as well as more recent data. It is shown that states characterized by a more egalitarian land distribution, which are not under RESUMENEl presente artículo estudia la relació n entre la estructura agraria y la formació n de capital humano, tanto dentro como entre las unidades federales de Brasil. Se argumenta que la agricultura de los Estados es de estilo plantació n -basado en mano de obra forzada barata, o por el contrario organizada alrededor de la granja familiar -es crucial para la formulació n de las políticas educativas. De acuerdo a esta hipó tesis, los propietarios de la tierra no estaban interesados en pagar impuestos má s altos para educar a las masas y restringieron la expansió n escolar con la intenció n de mantener una mano de obra barata y el monopolio del proceso de toma de decisiones. A través de la descripció n de distintos episodios de la historia de la instrucció n pú blica en Brasil, el artículo muestra los conflictos distributivos sobre la educació n y la resistencia de la aristocracia rural en relació n con los má s amplios objetivos ciudadanos para intensificar las políticas educativas. La evidencia descriptiva se complementa con el aná lisis estadístico de datos histó ricos y recientes. Se muestra que los Estados con una distribució n má s igualitaria de la tierra, que no está n bajo el dominio de poderosos propietarios de la tierra, tuvieron una mejor cobertura y calidad educativa. Asimismo, demostramos que invirtieron má s en escolarizació n.Palabras clave: desigualdad de tierra, latifundistas, educació n, Brasil

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